Medical Centre

It was a great privilege to be invited to speak at the 2016 TASME Conference (Trainees in the Association for the Study of Medical Education), where I spoke on the topic of "Writing in medicine - How to Capture an audience: Social media, editorials, letters and clinical commentaries". The standard of the presentations and posters was excellent, and reflects very well on clinical trainees and medical students. Social media differentiates itself from more traditional forms of media by its immediacy and its focus on social interaction. Websites and online forums allow users to share information through interactive electronic exchanges. Many businesses now incorporate social media into their marketing strategies to deliver key messages, advertise services or improve communication with clients. The NHS, doctors and health professionals have been slower to take up the use of social media but we are now also now seeing increased use of social media in the health sector. In this ...

In an article published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine , Ailsa McKay, Ravi Parekh and I  discuss some of the implications of the imposition of the new junior doctor contract in England's NHS. For doctors, the contract's imposition is distressing for several reasons. First, the contract is incompletely developed, and there are errors in the associated ‘pay calculator’, and heavily criticised, unrealistic rotas have been published. Doctors are therefore unable to determine the hours they are likely to work under the new contract, how these will be distributed across the week, and the impact on their salaries. This uncertainty is compounded by lack of clarity around the government’s rationale for imposition: provision of a ‘seven-day National Health Service’. The government has not clearly defined what it means by this, and the proposed rotas do not redistribute services evenly across the week. Indeed it is unclear whether the new rotas will provide any enhancem...

The UK government has announced the imposition a new junior doctor contract in England. Related negotiations between the British Medical Association and government representatives about a new junior doctors contract started in in 2013. These negotiations failed to reassure doctors, who were concerned about risks to their welfare, patient safety, and the future of England's National Health Service. With the impending imposition of the new contract, and lack of progress, junior doctors felt the risks of striking had fallen below those of inaction. Hence, the first strike staged by the English medical workforce for 40 years occurred in January 2016. This strike has been followed by subsequent strikes, with a full strike that will also include withdrawal of emergency care due to take place on 26-27 April 2016. Read more in the Journal of Ambulatory Care Management .